Monster mod, variant walking modes

[SirDanest]

I'm looking into monster mod on the geck, and there's those ingenious creatures, like a gecko that somehow walks like a man, and death claws in hats, etc.
I'd love to know how they got the animations to walk like a different kind of creature; I've been imagining something that looks like a tunneler and walks like a person, or a human npc that for whatever reason walks like a tunneler. I'm already assuming the answers are insanely complex unfortunately, but I don't even know what to google to research it.

[madmongo]

I haven't looked at how it was done for that mod, but it's not that complex, though it does require some knowledge of a 3d modeling program like Blender or 3dsMax.

 

All you need to do is take the creature mesh and load it into your modeling program, unparent the mesh from its existing armature, and reparent it to the new armature that you want. In other words, load in the gecko mesh, for example, unparent it from the gecko armature (skeleton), reparent it to the human skeleton, and now you have a gecko that walks like a man. You can use the new gecko mesh like an outfit and equip it onto an NPC, and then your gecko-man will have all of the animations available to a regular NPC.

 

If course, the devil is in the details. I've never used 3dsMax (it's a bit pricey for the version that works with FNV), but I have used Blender a fair amount and I know from experience that it sometimes totally borks up the bone weighting when you parent a mesh to a new armature. Then you have to go in by hand and adjust the bone weights, which is simple enough to do, but can be a bit time-consuming.

 

The things to google to learn more about this are 3d modeling, rigging, armatures, and stuff like that. Blender Noob to Pro is a free online book that is also an excellent resource.

 

If you look up armor and clothing tutorials, creature meshes are basically rigged the same way.

[SirDanest]

Thanks... sounds a little easier than I expected. It's probably harder when going from creature to human or vice versa. "humans" have multiple parts that creatures don't seem to have in the same way.